Maya Angelou Typography by Amy Cathryn

The Maya Angelou Typography was going to be part of an collaborative series titled “Motivational Mondays” although it didn’t really happen, what is more important is the brilliant output which is the project itself. May you not lose hope in making your artworks as you always learn something new every time you create one.

I saw this project as an opportunity to explore Adobe Photoshop’s 3D Workspace and further develop my skills. I really like quotes by Maya Angelou, and found this one in particular to be very inspiring and apropos for the series. I began the project by doing research on hand-lettered typography and how to measure kerning/letting by hand. I then began creating warm-up sketches in my graph paper sketchbook and finally created the interactive typography layout I was looking for. I imported it into Adobe Illustrator and vectorized it, smoothing out the lines and cleaned it up a bit. After that, I imported it into Adobe Photoshop and created the gilding, lighting and shading in Photoshop’s 3D workspace. The most time-consuming aspect of the project was the rendering. It took about 12 hours. Even though the collaborative series didn’t happen, something good came from it because I was able to explore new skills and create something beautiful.

– Amy Cathryn

About Amy Cathryn

Amy Cathryn is a Graphic Designer, Fine Artist and Photographer located in Birmingham, AL. She specializes in print design event photography and watercolors. You can find more of his artworks on her Behance profile or website.